Epson EH-TW650 Review- The Best Home Projector Under a Budget

The home projector market has been seeing quite a decline lately. With higher-end projectors coming in quite costly, it’s hard for cinephiles to find one which fits their budget. Well, Epson has just the solution. The Epson TW650 is a projector which won’t burn a hole in your pocket and satisfy your home screening needs.

The Build

Weighing in just under 3kg, the projector has been built for convenience. Now it isn’t as mobile as you’d like it to be, and it will need to be plugged in for use. However, with the right setup, it gets the job done. The body also comes in with options to increase or decrease the size of the projection. There’s also a focus pull for adjusting the visual clarity.

However, as is expected, that will depend on the distance between the projector and the screen. The size of the screen, or in this case the wall, also factor in. Coming to sound quality, it’s decently good. While it isn’t better than your home theater speakers by any means, it does a fairly good job. And since the fan and the speaker are situated on opposite ends, fan noise never really is a nuisance. More on that below.

I/O Options – Epson Provides Decent Choices

Epson TW650 Input Options

Epson has provided a good deal of input options here. There are 2 HDMI ports, one of them having MHL support, one USB type-A port, one USB type-B port, & even a VGA input. For audio, there’s an RCA connector input. Speaking of that, you can also hook up your old console or even a VHS player, with support for them being in-built here. Sadly though, there is no 3.5mm headphone jack, but the in-built speakers do a decently good job. Even with the fans churning at their full speed, it doesn’t affect the sound experience by any noticeable means. Speaking of which, the fan noise can go up to as much as 37 dBA.

And yes, before you ask, the projector does come with in-built wireless functionalities. However, streaming content is not easy as you need to have your target content ready on the connected device. So while it can connect to your WiFi network, there’s very limited use of it. The average lifetime of the projector is about 4500 hours of normal use, with it promised to last up to 7 hours in ECO mode.

Picture & Audio Quality

Red Dead Redemption 2 projected via the TW650

At the end of the day though, it all comes down to how good it looks, doesn’t it? Keeping the projector about 4 metres from the wall, we got a decently sized image. Now, the projector is slated to provide a peak brightness of 3100 Lumens at roughly 7 metres from the screen. That isn’t enough to be visible with daylight pouring in through the window, or even with the lights on. However, in a sufficiently dark environment, it gets the job done. In the picture above, we turned down all home lights and solely relied on Epson to work its magic.

The projector supports full HD (i.e 1920×1080) in terms of resolution. We didn’t expect anything more than that considering the device comes in right under $600/ ₹58,300 in India. And while some may complain about its lack of support for 4K media, you might have to look at other (and more expensive) options. Also, you’re gonna need a lot of 4K media to consume, something which the industry is only beginning to standardize. If you do want that, consuming downscaled content, which is supported by YouTube, is something which will elevate the experience by a significant margin.

The projector can handle jpgs, BMPs, pngs, and gif formats. In terms of video, we had no problem getting it to run standard mp4, mkvand even mov files. For video testing, we plugged in a standard PS4, which supports Blu-ray and targets 1080p.

Input options

With a projector under such a budget, it’s not expected to provide excellent color accuracy. In fact, the default color settings out of the box aren’t really the best, with us having to fumble around the color presets and manually entering the settings when it arrived.

Lastly, the projector has a refresh rate support of up to 240 Hz, but that doesn’t mean you should plug your gaming PC into it. Visual clarity at refresh rates higher than 100Hz tends to drop, although that can be adjusted to some extent with the focus pull. This is why most people use these projectors for movie binging sessions at a comfortable 24fps. However, should the need ever arise to have a larger-than-life gaming experience, the EH-TW650 will be ready.

Our Verdict

Overall, Epson has done a great job at catering to the budget home projector market. The EH-TW650 is best used in conjunction with a media player which should support streaming services, as that’s where you’ll be using it the most. That said, if you’re looking for 4K support, Epson has a wide range of other projectors to choose from. With great visual quality and a decent amount of input options, could it replace my TV? Only time will tell.

You can buy the Epson EH-TW650 projector for ₹58,300 from Amazon or from Epson’s website.

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SUMMARY

The Epson TW650 is a great home projector for cinephiles and gamers alike. Coming in under most people's budgets, it offers features that most of its competitors can't manage it, all the while without compromising on the visual, or aural, quality.

Film is love. Film is life. If you haven't guessed by now, yes I'm the resident movie nerd here.
I also founded Screen Wars, TechQuila's sister-site focused on Entertainment.
Although I do venture into other 'productive' stuff. You know, like gaming... Binging through a good show on a rainy Sunday with a cup of coffee is my ideal holiday. Or stuffing more books on to my Kindle. If there are two things I love more than anything, they're dogs and movies. Not necessarily in that order. Maybe. xD